Anniversary
by Laiqualaurelote
Summary: Oneshot. The twelve months following V's death, as Evey picks up the pieces and comes to terms with the fact that he's gone forever. Or is he?


Author's Note: This fic is a mish-mash of the vastly different cultures of graphic novel canon and movieverse – more movieverse, for while the graphic novel was a noble and outstanding work, the movie caught me with its little nuanced scenes. The roses are Scarlet Carsons, because – well, they really do look more scarlet than violet. I thought of this before I read the graphic novel, and was pleasantly surprised that the ending in there resembled mine.

All the dates are significant; apart from the more obvious ones like Christmas and the New Year, some of them are dates with relevance to my own world, such as various people's birthday's, including my own.

I do not own V for Vendetta, and neither, on a lesser note, Phantom of the Opera, The Count of Monte Cristo, _Cry Me A River, _Paracelsus or Pygmalion.

**Anniversary**

_December 25_

Evey spends over a month questioning the point of a continued existence.

It reminds her of her time in V's prison, when the weight of despair weighed down everything, crushing her flat like a press squeezing water from paper pulp. She stops thinking, walks like a somnabulist; her routine is simple. Eat, sleep, eat, sleep, occasionally change position. She stares ahead of her with empty eyes. Sometimes she watches television: random newscasts, or V's old movies. Not a single image registers in her brain.

At least in prison she had Valerie's letters. It's not like V is going to write.

Today she is curled up on the couch before the television, her mind as blank as the screen. She just ate lunch. She has been living on canned food for the time she has been here; the Shadow Gallery is well-stocked. She can't stand to cook. The stove reminds her of checkered aprons, black-gloved fingers around the frying pan handle.

Evey finds an odd comfort in not thinking at all. Thinking is dangerous. It leads her down routes she can't follow.

Through the thick ceilings of the Shadow Gallery, she can hear the faintest of singing. Part of her remembers that it is Christmas, and that those are carollers, taking advantage of the recently-removed curfew to walk the streets singing.

She remembers looking forward to Christmas here, once. V would have cooked something nice. There might have been a tree.

The voices grow fainter as the carollers put distance between their feet and the stones beneath which the Gallery resides. Evey hears the singing long after it has gone, hears it echoing around the hollow insides of her head.

Evey gets up and shuffles over to the stove, stands for a long while regarding its disused state. Then her hand mechanically scoops up the dust-cloth hooked on its side and begans to push it into the grooves around the gas-rings.

It is Christmas, and she might cook something nice.

* * *

_January 1_

The New Year. Evey can't make herself believe that it has been so long. So long since a mysterious masked stranger saved her from three Fingermen in a dark, deserted street some hapless night ago.

Sometimes she gets scared that she might forget: forget the sound of his voice, the curl of his hands, the way to tell if he was smiling under the mask. It's been so long. Time takes things away.

Evey locates one of V's vintages, pours herself a glass. She puts on a coat and takes the glass up to the roof, via the lift.

London is bright with lights, soaked in the sound of celebration. Evey watches all of it from the balcony, and drinks the wine, idly trying to place what she is thinking. She's not used to thinking. One month was longer than she thought, and yet it still seems as if V died yesterday.

Presently it begins to rain.

Down below, the revellers grumble as the merriment breaks up, its participants fleeing for shelter. Raindrops pool in globules in the curve of the wine-glass. The drops grow heavier, spattering the shoulders of Evey's coat.

She remembers Valerie's words. _God is in the rain_.

And then she knows. She will not forget, not if she saves him like the rain. Then he will be in the sky and in the earth, in every raindrop and every face she sees. He will be in the Shadow Gallery, in the streets of London; he will be in her.

The rain becomes a storm, and Evey stays out to watch the lightning.

_

* * *

_

_February 14_

Evey thinks that Valentine's Day is yet another of those funny alphabetical coincidences. Valentine's Day. V'Day.

Today she feels sombre, as she cuts the roses and lays fresh layers upon Valerie's memorial. The roses are perfection as usual, as was everything that he owned.

Evey stands before the poster of the _Salt Flats_ and bows her head, thinking of that beautiful, selfless woman to whom she and V owe so much.

The image of the Scarlet Carsons stays in her mind as she turns away, and before she knows it she is cutting more roses, bringing armfuls back to the living room and laying them in some perplexing formation on the floor. The petals are furred, velvety, crisp even as they are soft. She could get drunk on their sheer redness.

Evey regards her work. The instinctive formation is a V. No surprises, there.

He had more than one mask; once she found a whole storeroom of them, boxes upon boxes of Guy Fawkes. She fetches one now, and places it within the crook of the V.

Somehow it doesn't look right. V isn't the sort of person one builds a memorial to, not the sort of image to be enshrined. He can only remind her of life; his very stillness in death seemed unnatural, impossible. He was a terrorist, and he went in flames.

There is a fireplace in the Shadow Gallery. The central heating makes it unnecessary, but V liked the ambience.

Evey holds a rose in the flames. At first the redness grows till it is near unbearable, almost as if the flower is blooming into an impossible incarnadine. Then, as she watches, it blackens, the vibrant petals thinning and fracturing into fiery orange lace, and then finally disintegrating. She throws the stalk into the fire, and picks up the next rose.

While the last handful burns, she stares into the flames, caressing the wooden mask in her hand. Without thinking she raises it to her lips and kisses it, like she kissed him once and only once, on the lips of his façade and on the intangible lips beneath. But now there is no man behind the mask, only the cold surface, and suddenly she feels the tears springing to her eyes at the pure physical absence of skin beneath the mask, warmth beneath the wood.

She entertains the thought of flinging the mask after the roses, watching Guy Fawkes's smile crackle and distort; but she takes it back to the storeroom, slides it under the lid, and leaves, shutting the door behind her with quiet finality.

* * *

_March 25_

Evey hasn't been out for ages. Her old self, the girl brought up under the regime, marvels at her daring, her defiance of the curfew, now rarely regarded by Londoners. Her new self, the self V gifted her with, takes it all in her stride.

She digs her fingers into her pockets, the night breeze playing over her bare head. The outside air feels good, so good.

She becomes aware that a car has slowed down to drive at a snail's pace alongside her. The window rolls down to reveal a familiar face.

"Good evening, Inspector," she says cordially, allowing a small smile to filter through her grim expression.

Finch regards her caustically. "Good evening, Miss Hammond. Out late, are we?"

"And you too, Inspector," returns Evey, neither slowing nor picking up her pace.

Finch grunts in reply. "You need a ride home?"

Evey knows he would just love to find out the location of the Shadow Gallery, where he knows she must be staying now. Again the cordial smile, accompanied by a shake of the head. "I wouldn't want my night out to end so soon, Inspector."

There is a café ahead, its owners flagrantly challenging the curfew by keeping such late opening hours. Evey stops before it, and makes as if to step in, but she turns back slightly to the car.

"You're doing a good job with the new management, Inspector," she says. "V is pleased."

She can feel his eyes on her back as she enters the joint and orders a café cognac. The drink arrives, sweet and steaming. When she next looks, the car is gone.

* * *

_April 3_

Evey has begun to explore the Shadow Gallery. Apparently V never threw anything away; there are multiple stores of everything he owned: masks, wigs, knives.

The armoury of knives scared her at first: rows upon rows, shelves upon shelves of glinting blades. Today she has ventured in there once again, with the germ of an idea in her head planted there by watching the _Count of Monte Cristo _for the hundredth time. She has grown to love that movie almost as much as V did.

She selects a knife at random, weighs it in her hand. It is a lot heavier than she thought, and she wonders at length how he could handle them with such litheness, such speed.

She fills a box with them and carries it outside, to where she has cleared an empty space in the centre of the Shadow Gallery, and moved all the breakable stuff behind the television.

She picks a knife up and tries to get the feel of the blade. How to hold one of these? She shuts her eyes, remembers V's smooth fingers closing around the hilt, feels her own fingers replicating the memory. She lifts her hand, draws back her arm, ready for the throw.

The first knife lands at the base of the wall on which the target board is pinned. The second and the third land in different rooms altogether.

Evey stares at her hand, and tries to remember how V did it.

She can see it perfectly clearly, the flick of the wrist, the release; but somehow she cannot translate it into her own motions. Her own fingers are clumsy, weighed down the heavy blade – and how is it even possible to get the knife to land point first?

Part of her wants to sit down on the couch and cry, but the Evey born in the power showers and water tortures stays still and dangles a knife between fingers, thinking.

She thinks until she finds herself in a state of mental suspension, almost detached from her body, surreal and removed. She can feel his smile on the back of her neck.

His hand takes the knife from her and rearranges her fingers around it. He bends her wrist, pressing subtly on the joints, angling the blade at the target. He is speaking to her, but she cannot hear his words for the rushing wind in her ears.

The blade leaves her hand, and they watch it describe three perfect arcs through its passage.

On this fourth time, the knife actually hits the target board. It stays fixed for four quavering seconds, and then the tip dislodges from the rubber surface and the knife clatters to the ground.

Evey turns around, an exclamation of triumph on her lips, and bites it back when she sees he's no longer there.

* * *

_May 11_

Today she goes outside, to the supermarket, because while there's still a lot of tins in the Shadow Gallery, Evey thinks it's time she started cooking. Tins will only last so long.

Evidently there is some sort of sale going on, because there are long queues at all the counters. She pushes past them and walks down the aisles.

And then she sees what it is. Real food.

No more rations. Real food, on the shelves, for anyone to buy as much as they want. Most of it is gone by now, snatched up by the first delighted consumers.

Evey walks into the dairy section and stares at the emptied shelves.

Then she walks back to the queues.

She's never done this before, but when her hand slips down and nicks a slab of butter off the pile in a woman's full trolley, she doesn't hesitate, but continues walking, never breaking her stride. She gets into line at another counter, the butter cool in her hand. V would think it funny, really.

The next morning, she decides to cook breakfast. She has bread and eggs, and now there's the butter, real butter like that second morning long ago. She gets out the frying pan and sets about figuring out how to light the vintage stove.

It's not as easy as V made it look, but she succeeds in sliding the bread off onto the plate before it burns. Ignoring the hot crust, she picks it up in her fingers and bites off a corner, just deep enough to taste the topping. It sears her mouth with heat and with taste.

Evey puts the frying pan back on the gas-ring and looks at the pile of ingredients. There's still some butter left.

She'd do well to save it; with luck, it will last her the rest of the week. But she finds herself cutting another hunk off the slab and dropping it onto the second frying piece of bread. She cracks the egg onto it, and watches the bread sizzle, the butter melt.

After turning the stove off and putting everything back in the small fridge, she lays a second place at the table, and puts the other eggy-in-a-basket before the empty seat. Then she sits down before her original meal, and eats it slowly, her eyes not leaving the vacant place.

She chews, and wonders why she did that. It's not like she expects the bread to suddenly soar up in the air and disappear in large bites.

She finishes her own eggy, licks the butter off her fingers with slow relish, and she still stares at the plate at the other end of the table, slowly cooling in the still air.

Evey gets up and puts her own plate in the sink. Then she leans over and drags the other plate over, scoops up the bread and begins to eat it in small bites.

It'd be a pity to waste real butter, after all.

* * *

_June 17_

All women have attacks of vanity some time in their lives, and now Evey is having one.

She is in the midst of spring-cleaning. Whenever Evey begins to feel hints of loneliness, she does housework. The Shadow Gallery has never been cleaner.

Today, she has put on the jukebox, fetched the equipment, and is wandering around the borders of the Shadow Gallery looking for anything dusty.

She's found the old mirror with V's motto on it; it's dusty after a year of neglect, and so she sets to work on it, rubbing vigorously around the raised gothic letters. In the corner, Michael Crawford is singing _Music of the Night_ on the jukebox. Evey supposes that V must have liked _Phantom of the Opera._ Same philosophy about the masks.

Evey thinks that V is her phantom. He appears in her mirrors when she least expects him to.

She has been observing her reflection for a long while without really noticing she is; when she finally realises it, she is struck by how long her hair has grown since V shaved it off last year. It is curling past her ears now, and shows all likelihood of growing back to its old length.

Evey touches her hair unconsciously with her free hand, feeling the light strands, the curls. It's a good length to wear earrings with, although she hasn't worn any jewellery for over a year now.

Evey fingers a curl, her mind fraught with indecision. Part of her wants to keep it, to let it grow again till it falls past her shoulders again, heavy and beautiful. Part of her feels violently like shaving it once more. There was an odd deliciousness about her shorn head, her stripped beauty, the mark of her torture. V would have said as much.

She can see him in the mirror again, out of the corner of her eye, sitting in the armchair and smiling his eternal smile. She knows that if she concentrates on him or turns around, he won't be there. She focuses on her hair, weighs her decisions, cloth and chores forgotten.

_Open up your mind_, sings the jukebox, _let your fantasies unwind, in this darkness which you know you cannot fight._

This long, Evey finally decides. No longer, no shorter. Or perhaps a quick trim might be in place.

It all depends on how well it will all fit under the wig. She'll try it on, and then she'll make adjustments.

* * *

_July 7_

It's a very cold night, and Evey has no idea why she wants to be walking the streets at this hour, but it is a whim, and of late she has been obeying her whims. She has nothing else to obey, having no purpose in life but to go on living.

She borrows one of V's cloaks to pull over her coat, packs her handbag and sets off into the night.

She adores these night walks, these breaths of fresh air every once in a while. She loves the Shadow Gallery as her own home, but some part of her still belongs to the upper airs, and after the stale scent of years underground, it is good to breathe outside.

Nobody obeys curfew any more, but the streets empty after midnight, everyone having wearied of the novelty of staying up late. Evey has the pavement to herself, the night as her own.

She is enjoying herself so much that she only realises the footsteps after they have been following her for some time. In the glass of a dark shop window she catches a glimpse of the men, two of them. They've been following her for some time.

She passes through an alley, and they are joined by a third. Evey is beginning to feel a faint sense of déjà vu.

She quickens her pace. They speed up, intent. Evey makes her mind and takes flight, abandoning all caution and running down the alley, clutching her bag.

The men rise to a jog, not eager to have their prey slip away. They know these streets better than she does; that alley leads to a dead end.

She is waiting for them around the corner.

They lurch around the corner, ready to leer, and the first thing that catches the moonlight is the knife.

It's not an expert throw, and misses the target – his forehead – by several inches, the blade burying itself in his shoulder. The first man crumples to his knees, yelling at the pain in his shoulderblade. The other two stop, momentarily stunned at the sight of not a frightened girl crouched in the shadows, but a cloaked figure in the moonlight, wearing a mask that has not been seen for some time but can still strike fear into hearts.

Evey knows she must strike now, while they are off-balance, and some invisible hand guides her as she dashes forward, slashing inexpertly but with no less effect. One knife scores along the second man's collarbone; the other slashes across the last one's chest. Behind the mask she can hear their screams, but her arms are already whirling around and pushing forward; she ignores the sickly fleshy sounds and withdraws them. The last man, her knife still in his shoulder, stares up at her mask through a mask of terror of his own.

The blow is fast, a swift dispatch. V did not believe in mercy, and now she doesn't either.

She pulls her first knife from his shoulder and walks back the way she came, the blades dripping blood over the cobblestones.

As she passes the shop window, she looks into the glass and sees not the reflection of Evey Hammond, but the reflection of a man now long dead.

Evey smiles, a little crookedly, a little bitterly, but behind the mask it makes no difference.

She stops to clean the blades and wrap them in a handkerchief, and then she returns the mask to the depths of her handbag, and heads home.

* * *

August 19

The number of V-sightings has steadily increased over the last month, inversely proportionate to the number of insurrections and attempts to bring things back to the old fascist regime. Since last November there have been countless pockets of resistance against the new democratic ideal: out-of-work Fingermen, dissatisfied members of the old Party, people who want to return to Sutler's totalitarian world. Now they find themselves being rebuffed at every turn.

Evey stalks the streets of London as V more and more frequently now. She wears V's old costume, with the multiple knives that she is gradually becoming more adept at using. She is learning how to be fast, how to disappear, how to use the darkness as a shield. Often she makes mistakes, but still she learns.

Evey does not kill like he did, but otherwise she still does his work. She drops in on anyone abusing the badge of the Finger, shows her ubiquitous disapproval. By now she is politically aware enough to judge the campaigns of the various candidates running for the November elections, and to know when some of them are leaning in a way V would have preferred them to avoid. Then she steps in.

Tonight, she is engaging in meticulous vandalism. This particular politician's campaign is taking an altogether unsavoury turn towards the authoritarian, and Evey thinks she should be pointing him back in the right direction, or else edging him off the road altogether. His posters are the pale yellow ones, ornamenting the alley walls and shop windows. As she strides down the empty street she leaves a wake of slashed Vs on the jonquil sheets.

Evey enjoys these nights, in a way. Sometimes V walks them with her, and she is by now too used to this to comment.

She doesn't know if he is really there, a ghost or apparition from the dead, or if he is a memory, or even if she is hallucinating him. To her he is real enough, and she holds conversations with him as she traverses the streets, even though they are rather one-sided. She knows he replies, but as of yet she is unable to hear the words.

V amiably points out a poster that she missed, and hastily she goes over and scores the two diagonal lines, the knife-tip meeting little resistance till it scrapes the wall beneath. Not too obvious at first glance, but clear enough if you're trying to read. It hasn't been so long since V last swayed the minds of the populace, and his mark still carries much weight in public opinion.

She returns to where V is waiting at the street corner, and they continue walking: two Guy Fawkes in identical black hats, with identical static smiles. Two boots strike the pavement simultaneously; two black figures turn the corner, but only one casts a shadow.

Evey quickens; she must finish this before the sun rises. Some ideas thrive better in darkness. And anyway, her companion is always gone by daybreak

The sky is lightening when Evey, weary from her night's work, arrives at her nondescript front door. When she enters the Shadow Gallery, V does not follow her.

* * *

_September 9_

To amuse herself, Evey has organised a movie marathon. She has dug up all of V's old movies, selected about twenty to blow her day on, made some cold snacks, and settled down on the sofa to watch.

Seven films later, she is beginning to feel the first treads of exhaustion. She is halfway through the 1930s black-and-white version of _Pygmalion_. Evey hugs one knee to her chest and tries to ignore the faint drowsiness stealing over her mind by focusing on Leslie Howard's prominent nose as he rants phonetics at Wendy Hiller.

Her eyelids lower once, twice; she starts, shaking herself awake, and glimpses as she does so a flash of white to her right on the sofa.

Evey swivels and stares at the empty space inhabited by nothing apart from couch cushions.

She returns to the television screen.

After some time, she allows her eyes to lose focus again, and is rewarded by the appearance of white stylised features in the corner of her vision. With the tiniest bit of strain, it dissolves into nothingness once more.

Evey stifles a yawn, her mind eluding the confines of concentration and drifting away to light on random subjects. For no reason she recalls a familiar line from _Music of the Night_.

_Close your eyes_

_For your eyes will only tell the truth_

_And the truth isn't what you want to see_

_In the dark it is easy to pretend_

_That the truth is what it ought to be_

Evey shuts her eyes, shuts off the world and its light.

She is encased in the darkness, formless, directionless, like a swimmer in deep water who does not know which way is up. And now she can feel his presence stronger than ever, stronger than his reflection in a mirror, than his footsteps on the empty pavement.

The sofa's fabric beneath her hands is the only tenuous link to the real world, besides the sounds from the television. Blind, Evey edges along the sofa until she meets something solid. It appears to be his shoulder.

She touches it tentatively at first, as if terrified he might suddenly dissipate beneath her fingers. Then, assured of his solidity, she expels her breath and leans on his shoulder, revelling at last in the feel of his presence, the texture of the leather coat under her cheek.

His fingers stroke her short curls as waves of weariness wash over her. He is humming, snatches from Andrew Lloyd Webber, that intersperse with the dialogue from the television. She feels saturated in an immeasurable feeling of peace.

When she finally awakens, _Pygmalion _has finished and the television screen is blank. She is lying full-length on the sofa, her head pillowed on the plush arm, completely and absolutely alone.

* * *

_October 23_

Evey checks the diagram again. V left her all his plans: maps of the city-wide speaker system, annotated sketches of his record-playing equipment, even a list of firework production companies. It seems as if he knew what she was going to be thinking, eleven months down the road.

She has never been very good at mechanical things, but the annotations are a lifesaver. Satisfied with the wiring at this junction, Evey folds the diagram back into her coat pocket and descends cautiously, using the protusions on the metal chute as footholds.

Her feet have just touched the pavement when someone clears his throat behind her.

"Good evening, Inspector," says Evey pleasantly, bending down to pack up her toolbox. She fastens the lid and picks it up by the handle, turning around to face Finch.

Finch lights his pipe and regards Evey through narrowed eyes. "Planning a little something for November the fifth, Miss Hammond?"

"It's his anniversary," points out Evey, "and heaven knows he deserves some commemoration."

Finch holds the pipe lightly between the crook of his fingers. "I'm aware of that, Miss Hammond. No big explosions, I trust?"

"My tastes, Inspector," replies Evey levelly, "do not run that gamut. I thought a small firework display might suffice."

Finch puffs smoke into the thin night air. "I should hope so. Currently we are taking no action against your – terrorism, as some might call it, but don't overstep the line."

"I assure you, Inspector, that V has only ever been a friend to the people."

Finch takes the pipe out of his mouth and gives her another mordant stare. "Yeah." He returns it for another puff. "Right."

Evey smiles at him, polite, impassive, implacable.

Finch turns to walk away, but stops and looks back. "I'll be watching at the elections, Miss Hammond," he says over his shoulder. "I'll be watching your move."

"I," says Evey with equal calm, "have always been watching yours."

She watches him walk his beat down the street, and then turns to leave in the opposite direction, the toolbox jingling business-like in her hand.

* * *

_November 5_

Evey's dreams are an uneasy miasma of flashing shadows and echoes of long-gone voices. Someone is chanting that Guy Fawkes doggerel in the background: a child's voice, or perhaps it is V's – or even her own.

_Remember, remember, the fifth of November  
And the gunpowder treason plot   
I see no reason why the gunpowder treason  
Should ever be forgot_

Evey flings out an arm and twists restlessly in her bed, caught in the tempest of her dream; and then suddenly she comes awake, in the familiar dark of the Shadow Gallery.

She stares at the darkness pooling in inky tarns on the curves of the ceiling, as the night's delirium ebbs from her mind. Gradually, she becomes aware that there is music playing.

Evey slides out of bed. Her feet make no noise on the smooth floor. The knife is behind the alarm clock; there is another in the drawer below. Closing her fingers around both, she edges out of the bedroom.

She wonders, randomly, if Finch has finally found their hiding place and has, of all the things to do in a terrorist's lair, started playing the jukebox.

Holding the knife in her right hand ready, she enters the light.

The figure standing before the jukebox is not Finch. It's not anyone she ever expected to see again. The knife falls from her hand and clatters on the floor.

He turns around, wearing his eternal smile. "Hello, Evey."

"You're dead," she says. Then, with conviction: "You're not real. This is a dream."

V clasps his hands and angles his gaze upward, as he does when he wishes to quote. "That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in man, even if during his waking state he may know nothing about it." He cocks his head and looks at her. "For you, dear Evey, have been asleep in regard to that which is real within yourself."

Evey stares at him. "I have to confess, I don't know that one."

"But you do," says V, with a slight tone of reproach in his musical voice. "Paracelsus. Did I not read you _The_ _Dream Game_?"

"I can't recall."

"You cannot in your short-term memory," declares V, sagely, "but it is lodged somewhere in your recollections. For I am part of your dream, am I not? And thus I may not say anything you yourself do not know."

"You're speaking in riddles again."

V shrugs. "Habit, I know. How are you, Evey?"

Evey glares at him. "That's a stupid question, V." And then, "I _have_ missed you."

V sighs. "I know."

_Cry Me A River_ fills up the silence between them.

Evey extends a hand, touches his gloved fingers. The texture is tangible, there, and their fingers entwine, clasping with renewed strength.

And the gulf is crossed, and her arms are around his neck, her face pressed against his shoulder, the floodgate of her loss opened. Her crying is muffled by the fabric of his shirt. "I wish you didn't have to leave, V," she is saying, "I wish you weren't a dream."

V says nothing, holds her in silence.

Evey's tears still; now she can spot the signs, can feel the dream begin to slip away. She raises her tear-stained face to his smiling one, and kisses him chastely on the wooden mouth. The lips behind the mask are real, and she smiles against his smile.

"Goodbye, V," she says quietly, and steps away.

V looks up, looks at her, and then he's gone.

Evey stands, unmoving. The jukebox is silent.

In the distance she hears the bells of London begin to chime the hour of midnight. She runs to the lift and takes it up to the roof; when the doors open, she dashes out just in time to hear the strings of _1812_.

Evey watches the fireworks go up, and feels the tears run down her skin.

**End.**


End file.
